Graham Hancock on history: what the evidence says · JRE #2215
SUBJECT: HISTORY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
There was a point where Easter Island's population was reduced to just 11 people, and it was reduced to 11 people by Peruvian slave raids. They came and slaved the people of Easter Island, and they took them to work in Peru
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The historical low point for Rapa Nui (Easter Island) was about 110 to 111 people, not 11, roughly a hundredfold understatement. A 2024 genomic study published in Nature reconstructs this collapse and states that in the 1860s Peruvian slave raiders kidnapped about a third of the population, taking captives to work in Peru, and that after a smallpox outbreak the population fell to an estimated 110 individuals (commonly dated to the 1877 census). The slave raids were therefore real and central, but the low point resulted from the raids plus a subsequent smallpox epidemic (carried back by repatriated captives) and colonial-era emigration, not from the raids alone. The directional claim that Peruvian slave raids devastated the island is accurate, but the specific number of 11 and the framing of a single cause are wrong.